


Singularity

by chickabee



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: And I Mean Slow Burn, Explicit Language, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Y'all won't even notice the fire building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 23:30:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20572727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickabee/pseuds/chickabee
Summary: She’s a worn-out hoodie and a pair of ripped jeans in a sea of white tops and black pants. She fights and she fights, but eventually loses and she wakes up to the director smacking her in the face.Ok.That happened.





	Singularity

**Author's Note:**

> I am incapable of writing the first chapter of anything with more than the barest hints of dialogue, so if that's not your thing please bare with me. I promise future chapters will have more speaking than this!
> 
> I hope y'all enjoy!

A lot of white.

That’s all she really remembers before she passes out. White halls, white ceiling, white floors. White snow outside frosted-white windows. Even the filtered air smells white; the kind of white of a sanitized hospital, nothing but chemicals masking the smell of sickness and a building full of bodies amassed in one blocked-in space. At least all the scanners are blue. That’s something.

Fingerprint...voiceprint...DNA…

** 藤丸 立香  
F U J I M A R U R I T S U K A**

Gender? Female? Sure.

Age...twenty-three...No, wait, twenty-four. Her birthday was a couple months ago.

She still wasn’t sure if she was there for an interview or not. The application hadn’t been very clear. It honestly felt kind of skeevy to get accepted into a job she had applied to on a whim. She didn’t have any particular qualifications, other than being an less-than-average mage. Mostly she was there for the on-site living expenses. But a college drop-out didn’t have many choices.

The soft blue light and the hum of the machines lulls her into a stage of dissociation. Everything goes a little soft, a little hazy. Not like visually...but also kind of? She could still see, but the images didn’t register. After the battle simulation everything had gone kind of quiet. She moved down the hall, but didn’t remember moving. Hadn’t she been walking? And what the hell was licking her cheek?

“-iss. Um, miss-”

A cat. No, a squirrel? Rabbit. Definitely rabbit. Cat-rabbit.

A noise she could only describe as multiple question marks escapes her and suddenly there’s a cute young girl in glasses leaning over her. The girl doesn’t really introduce herself, and it takes some prying to get her name - Mash - and the girl starts calling her “senpai”. So cute. Her own little Mash-potato kouhai.

Mash introduces the creature that woke her as a squirrel named Fou. Ritsuka only half believes her.

She’s wondering if her job will really be taking care of the Fou-squirrel that just ran off when there’s a man, suddenly, in a green suit with hair so damaged Ritsuka can hear the crunch of dried out follicles. She resists the urge to chop off his split ends by focusing on his hat. It’s a nice hat. She wants the hat. And he...implies some things. About Mash. And how much freedom she doesn’t really have in this place. Unless no one’s supposed to be running around outside of designated areas. Which means Ritsuka’s in trouble because she’s terrible about staying out of places she’s supposed to.

Lev (Leff?) urges her to get checked out in the medical bay, since the entry simulation can be draining and falling onto the ground unprepared to catch yourself can lead to some seriously not-fun injuries. But then he also tells her she’ll have to wait because orientation (Orientation? She just arrived!) is about to begin. And being late would probably get her on the director’s bad side.

Wonderful.

Fantastic.

Lev-Leff seems nice, but Ritsuka’s worked enough customer service to recognize a red flag: There was no public advertisement of an orientation, let alone a specific time to be there, and being late is apparently a Big No-No.

She’s not sure she likes his lackadaisical attitude about the whole thing, especially as he hums and haws over how to get to the Command Room, but it’s only her first day. Baby steps.

Dizzy spells haunt her all the way to the presentation, and the director, a woman around her own age with long white hair, gives her a nasty stare. Everyone turns to stare at her as she makes her way to the only empty seat - front row - because of course they do. The human eye is attracted to movement and color, and she’s the only person in this room not in uniform. Didn’t even know there was a uniform. She’s a worn-out hoodie and a pair of ripped jeans in a sea of white tops and black pants. She fights and she fights, but eventually loses and she wakes up to the director smacking her in the face.

Ok.

That happened.

The director continues her presentation and Ritsuka slouches in her chair. Just to be petty, she man-spreads like God Himself is going to give her the dick to end all dicks. The Great Dickening. The All-Mighty Dick of Divine Intervention. Ritsuka Fujimaru, King of Dicks.

She’s not being sent on the first mission. Perfect. She doesn’t even know what’s going on. Chaldea. Rayshifting. A mixing of magecraft and science that’s certainly making Miss Olga Marie Animusphere’s ancestors roll in their graves, with the Mage’s Association and the Church fighting to see who can breathe down her neck the hardest. She’s got to hand it to her, the woman has balls. Not as big as Ritsuka’s impending God-given balls, but balls nonetheless.

Anything beyond that goes over Ritsuka’s head, though. She won’t be remembering anything until she’s had a chance to write it all down.

But since she’s not going on the first mission, Mash escorts her to her room before taking off. Fou appears out of nowhere (for a second she thought he was attacking Mash’s face) and Mash has a Disney princess moment where she seems to have a conversation with the thing. He’s going to look after her while Mash is away. That’s cool, but did she like? Get adopted? By this sixteen-year-old? Is that what’s happening?

There’s a man. In her room. Chilling on her bed. And he has the audacity. The gall. To ask what she’s doing there. Because this is his slack-off room. He. Who introduces himself as the head of the medical wing, Dr. Romani Archaman.

He seems nice enough, if a little too eager to make friends, and a certain level of scatter-brained that makes her a little worried that he’s the head doctor. But her head and hip still kinda hurt from where she fell and she’s still a bit dizzy so she lets him check her head for bumps or lumps while he chatters on about...anything that seems to come to mind, really.

Lev-eff calls for him on the intercom, thinking he’s in the infirmary, and wants him to come check on the other Candidates. Ritsuka remembers enough to know the machines they’re in aren’t actually coffins...but who in their right mind would call them Coffins?!

Fou is just enough like a cat that she pulls him off her shoulder and sets him in her lap. It’s soothing, petting him. Calming. She might be a little more anxious about how much the director dislikes her than she wants to admit.

As Romani’s about to leave the lights go out.

There’s a muffled boom from somewhere in the building.

There’s a fire. A fire in the central power station. The Central Command room. Red lights flare all along the room and the hall outside.

Evacuating...but what about the other Candidates? Without the power station their Coffins can’t be opened. But it’s not like she can do anything…

But she can’t just leave them…

She can’t leave him again…

Romani takes off down the hall and she takes off after him. He calls out to her as she runs past him.

They make it to the Central Area together. There...there aren’t any survivors. Chaldeas is the only thing still there. The back-up power fails. Romani urges her to leave. Run. Get outside and wait for help. There’s a back-up for the back-ups and he’s going to try and save the power. Don’t stop for anything. Just get out.

But Mash, there’s Mash, buried under rubble and with enough obvious wounds that even Ritsuka can tell she won’t make it. She can’t. She can’t be the only survivor. Not again. She didn’t do anything with the second chance she’d been given. There’s no way in hell she deserves a third.

She stays...and the emergency gate closes.

She’s trapped, they’re both trapped. No one can reach them. Society is collapsing. Chaldeas can’t find a future for humanity. The world has no future.

Humanity...has no future. They’re both going to die (everyone in the world is going to die!) and Mash is so calm, how can she be so calm?! and even as all the systems fail, the coordination for the first Rayshift has been set.

Mash...wants to hold her hand…

She can’t say no…

There’s a light.

A blue light, in the midst of all the red, and they’re Rayshifting and they’re out - they made it out! - but this new place isn’t much better off than the destroyed command room they left…

**January.**

****

**2004.**

****

**Singularity F.**

****

** Fuyuki City.**

###### 

A lot of black.

That’s all she can really see when she comes to. Blackened buildings, blackened ground. Blackened sky, full of smoke. Blackened corpses among the rubble. Wrong year...but exactly the same...the smell of ash and burning clogs her throat. Or maybe it’s just panic.

Mash is alive! She’s alive and...wearing armor. Which is black. And she has a shield - also black. And Fou is licking her cheek and skeletons are attacking and Romani’s there on a flickering screen trying to give her a crash course on Masters and Servants. But the connection sucks because of course it does. They need to find a stronger ley line.

It’s probably in the direction of that scream.

It’s definitely in the direction of that scream.

And for the fifteen minutes or so that they walk, Ritsuka feels like the world’s biggest ass. What kind of adult let’s a teenager fight out front? What kind of senpai stands back and let’s their underclassman take the brunt of the action? Forget outright physical danger, what’s happening to Mash’s psyche? There’s no denying that between the two of them Mash is better equipped to be fighting these skele-zombies coming at them left and right, but still…

They find the ley line and Olga Marie, the source of the screaming. Everything’s a mess. Olga Marie...might not even be a mage. She can’t sense the Ley key. Less than twenty survivors back in Chaldea. The highest ranked staff member is Romani. The other Candidates are stuck in cryopreserve because there aren’t enough supplies to save them all. Humanity has. No. Future.

And she’s stuck in this singularity, a burning city exactly like the one that took everything from her, with a teenager possessed by a heroic spirit and the heir to one of the twelve most influential mage families (with a huge chip on her probably-not-a-mage shoulder), until they fix whatever happened to throw history all out of whack.

Ritsuka groans, “Fuck my life.”


End file.
